Ireland’s Image as a Tourism Destination in France: Attribute Importance and Performance

Abstract

Ireland is highly dependent on tourism as an employment and revenue generator. Recent trends, however, suggest that visitors from France, one of Ireland’s key source markets, may have peaked. Tourism images are critical to the success of any destination, particularly because of how they affect the level of satisfaction with the tourist experience. Ireland is frequently acknowledged as a successfully branded and marketed tourism destination. Nonetheless, few image studies to date have focused specifically on Ireland, and none has analyzed the image of Ireland as a tourism destination in France. The aim of this study, therefore, was to redress this knowledge deficit. A questionnaire was used to examine the importance of certain destination attributes for French tourists and to determine how French visitors rate Ireland’s performance with respect to these attributes pre- and postvisitation. This information was subsequently incorporated into an importance-performance analysis grid.